Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / March 23-24, 2011

Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday evening:

Lihue, Kauai –                     81
Honolulu airport, Oahu –     83
Kaneohe, Oahu –                78
Molokai airport –                 80
Kahului airport, Maui –         82
Kona airport –                       83
Hilo airport, Hawaii –           79

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Wednesday evening:

Barking Sands, Kauai – 83F
Kaneohe, Oahu – 74

Haleakala Crater –     missing (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 37 (under 14,000 feet on the Big Island)

Precipitation Totals – The following numbers represent the largest precipitation totals Wednesday evening:

0.89    Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.94    South Fork Kaukonahua, Oahu
0.01    Molokai
0.00    Lanai 
0.00    Kahoolawe
1.17    Puu Kukui, Maui
0.87    Waiakea Uka, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a large 1034 millibar high pressure system to the north of Hawaii. Our trade winds will be locally strong and gusty through Friday.

Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with this Infrared Satellite Image of the islands to see all the clouds around during the day and night. This next image is one that gives close images of the islands only during the daytime hours, and is referred to as a Close-up visible image. This next image shows a larger view of the Pacific…giving perspective to the wider ranging cloud patterns in the Pacific Ocean. Finally, here's a Looping IR satellite image, making viewable the clouds around the islands 24 hours a day. To help you keep track of where any showers may be around the islands, here’s the latest animated radar image.

Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live web cam on the summit of near 14,000 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is the Haleakala Crater, which is near 10,000 feet in elevation. These two web cams are available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon rising just after sunset for an hour or two! Plus, during the nights and early mornings you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise too…depending upon weather conditions.

Tropical Cyclone activity in the eastern and central Pacific – Here’s the latest weather information coming out of the National Hurricane Center, covering the eastern north Pacific. You can find the latest tropical cyclone information for the central north Pacific (where Hawaii is located) by clicking on this link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. Here’s a tracking map covering both the eastern and central Pacific Ocean. A satellite image, which shows the entire ocean area between Hawaii and the Mexican coast…can be found here. Of course, as we know, our hurricane season ended November 30th here in the central Pacific…and begins again June 1st.

 Aloha Paragraphs

More strong and gusty trade winds on tap
 
 

The trade winds will remain stronger than normal into Friday…then gradually relax in strength into early next week.  According to this weather map, we find a strong, and very large 1034 millibar high pressure system to the north of the islands Wednesday night. We still have our small craft wind advisory flags up over all the coastal and channel waters statewide. A wind advisory remains active over the entire state as well…which will remain in place through Thursday. These trades will carry showers our way at times, especially along the windward sides. The south and west facing leeward sides will be drier, although they could see some showery clouds flying over from the windward sections at times too.

Trade winds will be strong and gusty…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts, along with directions Wednesday evening:

38 mph       Port Allen, Kauai – ENE
36              Honolulu, Oahu – NE
38              Molokai – NE
47                Kahoolawe – E 
44                Kahului, Maui – E
16              Lanai Airport – NE    
52                South Point, Big Island – NNE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean Wednesday night.  This large University of Washington satellite image shows high cirrus clouds now holding off to the west and north of the Hawaiian Islands…although it appears that we could see more of this high cloudiness arriving with time  Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we see a showery lower level band of clouds impacting our windward sides…carried by the gusty trade winds. We can use this looping satellite image to see several bands of lower level clouds moving towards the windward sides of the islands…which will keep showers around through Thursday. We also see high cirrus clouds creeping in our direction from the west. Checking out this looping radar image shows generally light, although somewhat heavier showers impacting our north and east facing windward coasts and slopes.

We still haven't reached the end of our current windy trade wind episode, with showers now more plentiful too…particularly along our windward sides.  We have tonight through Thursday into Friday to be buffeted by these northeast to easterly trade winds.  We should begin to see some respite arriving this weekend into early next week. There were wind gusts up above the 50 mph mark Wednesday afternoon, which remain in the 40-50 mph range early this evening. As we know the trade winds typically slip down in strength overnight, and then zip right back up during the days…which will happen again Thursday.

The NWS office in Honolulu is keeping the current wind advisory going tonight, and is forecast to remain in action through Thursday as well. This advisory isn't all that common, and strongly suggests that our winds will be blustery.  The ocean surface will be very choppy and rough. Those areas on the islands too, will be subject to winds that can move trash barrels around and there may be some weak tree branches that could end up on the roadway. The latest word is that perhaps by this time next week, these trade wind speeds may come way down, and even so far that they would be replaced with light and variable daytime breezes. This typically happens when a cold front is approaching the islands from the northwest, which pushes our trade wind producing ridge of high pressure down close to Hawaii…knocking the winds down in turn.

~~~ Here in Kihei, Maui, at around 530pm, skies were mostly clear, with a breeze blowing, but nothing like those windier places around the state. Wednesday was actually quite a nice day in most areas, unless you were in one of those most exposed areas, with your nose into the strong and gusty trade winds. Winds in those areas zoomed all the way up past 50 mph in a couple of areas, on Maui and the Big Island…as usual. These two islands have the largest mountains, and the deepest valleys, which prompt typically the strongest winds. Each of the islands were windy though, with gusts in the 30-40 mph range. I expect the same on Thursday, and perhaps on Friday, although we should see gradual steps downwards in the wind speeds this weekend into early next week. Perhaps the main thing tonight, besides the wind, will be the increase in showers along our windward sides. The way the satellite images are looking, there is a pretty supply of moisture heading our way. ~~~ I'll be back online again early Thursday morning, with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great Wednesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: All of those broken bones in northern Japan, all of those broken lives and those broken homes prompt us to remember what in calmer times we are invariably minded to forget: the most stern and chilling of mantras, which holds, quite simply, that mankind inhabits this earth subject to geological consent—which can be withdrawn at any time. For hundreds, maybe for thousands of people, this consent was withdrawn with shocking suddenness—all geological events are sudden, and all are unexpected if not necessarily entirely unanticipated—at 2:46 on this past clear, cool spring Friday afternoon.

One moment all were going about their quotidian business—in offices, on trains, in rice fields, in stores, in schools, in warehouses, in shrines—and then the ground began to shake. At first, the shock was merely a much stronger and longer version of the temblors to which most Japanese are well accustomed.

There came a stunned silence, as there always does. But then, the difference: a few minutes later a low rumble from the east, and in a horrifying replay of the Indian Ocean tragedy of just some six years before, the imagery of which is still hauntingly in all the world’s mind, the coastal waters off the northern Honshu vanished, sucked mysteriously out to sea.

The rumbling continued, people then began to spy a ragged white line on the horizon, and, with unimaginable ferocity, the line became visible as a wall of waves sweeping back inshore at immense speed and at great height.

Just seconds later and these Pacific Ocean waters hit the Japanese seawalls, surmounted them with careless ease, and began to claw across the land beyond in what would become a dispassionate and detached orgy of utter destruction. We all now know, and have for 50 years, that geography is the ultimate reason behind the disaster.

Japan is at the junction of a web of tectonic-plate boundaries that make it more peculiarly vulnerable to ground-shaking episodes than almost anywhere else—and it is a measure of Japanese engineering ingenuity, of social cohesion, of the ready acceptance of authority and the imposition of necessary discipline that allows so many to survive these all-too-frequent displays of tectonic power.

But geography is not the only factor in this particular and acutely dreadful event. Topography played an especially tragic role in the story, too—for it is an axiom known to all those who dwell by high-tsunami-risk coastlines that when the sea sucks back, you run: you run inland and, if at all possible, you run uphill.

But in this corner of northeast Japan, with its wide plains of rice meadows and ideal factory sites and conveniently flat airport locations, there may well be a great deal of inland—but there is almost no uphill. Such mountains as exist are far away, blue and distant in the west. All here is coastal plain.

And so the reality is this: if a monstrous wave is chasing you inland at the speed of a jetliner, and if the flat topography all around denies you any chance of sprinting to a hilltop to try to escape its wrath, then you can make no mistake—it will catch you, it will drown you, and its forces will pulverize you out of all recognition as a thing of utter insignificance, which of course, to a tsunami, all men and women and their creations necessarily must be.

Interesting2: The release of two types of radioactive particles in the first 3-4 days of Japan's nuclear crisis is estimated to have reached 20-50 percent of the amounts from Chernobyl in 10 days, an Austrian expert said Wednesday. The calculations published by Austria's Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics may add to growing concern in Japan and elsewhere over the contamination of food products such as milk and vegetables in areas near the Japanese reactor site.

Tuesday, France's IRSN radiation protection and nuclear safety institute estimated leaks of radiation from the Fukushima plant crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami represented about 10 percent of those from Chernobyl, the world's worst nuclear disaster, in 1986.

Comparisons are hard because Chernobyl's reactor blew apart, rather than leaking more slowly. Chernobyl's pollution blew over land in Europe while much of the contaminated air from Fukushima's crippled reactors has dispersed over the Pacific.

The Austrian institute's Dr Gerhard Wotawa stressed the two isotopes from Fukushima he had sought to estimate — iodine-131 and caesium-137 — normally make up only one tenth of total radiation.

Based on measurements made at monitoring stations in Japan and the United States, Wotawa said the iodine released from Fukushima in the first three-four days was about 20 percent of that released from Chernobyl during a ten-day period. For Caesium-137, the figure could amount to some 50 percent.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday Japanese authorities had told the Vienna-based agency that radiation dose rates at the plant were decreasing, although the overall situation remained serious.

One U.N. study has estimated Chernobyl, in Ukraine, may over time cause 4,000 to 9,000 extra deaths from cancer. And there are big differences in the handling of the crises. "At Chernobyl, the population was not generally aware that the accident had happened," said Malcolm Crick, Secretary of the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.

"People in the nearby town of Pripyat were watching the fire from just a kilometer or so away. They were evacuated a day or so later," he said, adding that children kept drinking milk despite risks of contamination.

"In Japan, there was a precautionary evacuation early on," he said, adding "it's too early to make a real assessment of the overall impact." Japanese authorities also distributed units of stable iodine which can help protect against radioactive iodine.

Edwin Lyman, senior scientist at the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists Global Security Program said the levels were worrying: "The fact that radiation releases are approaching the level they did in Chernobyl is a cause for concern, a sign of the severity of the accident that's already taken place," said Lyman, especially given the way Chernobyl exploded.

"One has to remember that there's still no evidence that the containment structures of the damaged (Fukushima) reactors 1, 2, and 3 have been significantly breached, which is a difference from Chernobyl where the confinement structure was destroyed in the very early stages of the accident."

Interesting3: According to a recent United Nations report, forested areas in Europe, North America, the Caucasus, and Central Asia have grown steadily over the past two decades. While tropical areas have steadily lost their forests to excessive logging and increased agriculture, northern areas have seen increases caused by conservation efforts.

However, the long-term health and stability of northern forest lands may be imperiled by the effects of climate change. The UN says that forests in these areas have grown by 25 million hectares in the last 20 years.

"In addition to forest area, the volume of wood in pan-European forests is growing by over 430 million cubic meters every year due to the expansion of the forest area and increases in stock levels," the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) said on World Forest Day, as experts gathered in Geneva to review trends in forests and forest resources in Europe and North America.

These forests play a great role in the world's carbon cycle, acting as a repository for carbon dioxide, a primary greenhouse gas. Northern forests account for about 40 percent of the world's forest according to the UNECE. They are generally classified as boreal or temperate.

The 25 million hectares which these forests have increased is slightly larger than all of the United Kingdom, and accounts for 8 percent of all the forest in the region. Most of the increase has occurred on the Eurasian continent; North America accounts for only a fifth of the growth.

UN Researchers warn that increasing climate variability can have negative consequences on the forest gains seen in recent years. For example, North American forests have been troubled by outbreaks of the mountain pine beetle which are linked to warmer winters. Since the 1990's, these insects have devastated over 11 million hectares.

Damage can also occur from weather such as heavy winds, storms, and snow. Climatologists have linked an increasing rate of extreme weather events to increased climate variability. The World Future Council, an international research organization that provides leaders with effective policy solutions, has sponsored the International Policy Award for Visionary Forest Policies. They have nominated 19 forest policies from 16 countries. Winners of the award will be announced on September 21 at the UN Headquarters in New York City.

Interesting4: Some 21,000 succulents call the roof of New York City's Con Edison's three-story Learning Center in Long Island City, Queens. The facility – some pales in comparison to the 2.5 living roof atop the Postal service facility in mid-town Manhattan. Meanwhile Chicago, the city that plays host to more green roofs than any other US City, added some 600,000 square feet of green roofs last year bringing their total coverage to a whopping 7 million square feet according to a December Yale Environment 360 article.

The city of Toronto even went so far as to mandate that new buildings above a certain size will have to cover at least 60% of their roofs with vegetation. According to research conducted by Con Edison and Columbia University on Con Edison's Long Island City green roof, the average winter heat loss was some 34% lower under the green roof than under the black roof, while the summer heat gain was 84% lower on the green roof than under the black roof.

In other words – green roofs keep buildings warmer in winter, reducing the need for heat, and cooler in summer, reducing the need for air conditioning. That's a cost savings that over the 25-50 year life span of a roof will bring considerable cost savings, even including the increased cost of building a green roof.